Revival of my Baby Boomer Blog

I thought I'd try to revive this blog. I originally created Baby Boomer Davy's Locker as a learning experiment after my corporate job of 22 years ended in 2008. As a creative person who found creativity basically shut down for most of those 22 years, when that job ended, I continued my persuit of what the Internet was doing, especially in the beginnings of social media and blogging. I began by setting up a blog, using blogger.com. To my amazement, I discovered I loved creative writing. I loved sharing stories of my view of the Baby Boomer Generation and the journey of my family.

During the time from 2008 through 2009, I was also exploring and wondering what I was going to do for a career and earning a living until my retirement years. My journey led me to realize that we Baby Boomers were probably not going to have what we saw our parents of the Greatest Generation enjoy as typical retirement. We were going to have to work longer but we also realized that working longer may be the key to living longer. Many of we Boomers saw our parents pass away not long after they stopped working those long hard work weeks of more than 40 hours. Stopping may not be a good thing. I spent the next year beginning the journey that would become what I do for my retirement years.

----- continued now on March 24, 2016 - I have successfully created a thriving small business, a music school named David's Music House in the Pittsburgh, PA area. Started on 10.10.10 - October, 10, 2010, I have now passed the 5 year anniversary, growing from 3 music teachers and 40 students to 17 music teachers and over 200 students. The school has become a staple of the community as area schools are sending students to us. This is a dream that started as a seed in my father's mind and heart and was born into me, through his support of my musical efforts. I feel and know that he is at my side, every day, enjoying what this dream has become. We are so much more than a place to learn how to learn about music. The mission is from my heart and mind to support the growth of kindness of the heart, in humbly, through the soulful connecting tool of music.

Look for more ongoing articles on this blog as I continue trying to show my mistakes and learning and growing of a Baby Boomer member, going through this thing we all call LIFE!

Peace & Love,

David

Only Time Really Tells the True Story

My business, David's Music House, Inc. is now entering it's sixth month of being open and I am realizing a new phase in owning my own business.


The first three months were just pounding in nails, ordering things, paying bills, looking for ways to bring in customers, ya da ya da ya da.....It was a complete whirlwind of emotions of both highs and lows. There weer golden moments and others of complete and utter stress. After three months, we were able to take a break due to the Christmas Holidays. After the break, I saw many things that needed tweaking and we made some changes of focus.


Now that we have hit the sixth month, I am seeing another similar phase. It is now time to do more tweaking, in the area of organization and time. We have hit a huge milestone in offering "A Total Music Experience" to the community as we added a whole new service. We have added dance to our host of services. Dance Etc. is a local dance business that has been in the community for 15 years. My youngest daughter, Savannah went to dance classes at Dance Etc. a few years ago. I was so happy to welcome Megan Beile, owner of Dance Etc. into our music family. This addition will also bring in many new families into our "experience" to see what David's Music House is all about.


Yes indeed, you can plan, get advice, read and research everything you can find to plan and start a business, but nothing but TIME of actually going through the steps and phases of starting a business will show you what it actually feels like. Don't misunderstand, the planning, advice, etc. is absolutely necessary to prepare you for going through the phases, but only going through the steps allows your to gain the true feeling, awareness and experience necessary to know if you're doing good or bad.


All signs point to success! The message is getting out to the community. Musicians are calling to perform in the Coffee House. Local musicians are discovering the recording studio and our helpfulness, comfortability and flexibility.


The main goal and passion to bring to any business is to NOT do the things that make you dislike other businesses when you are a customer. My passion is to ALWAYS present the best appearance of the business and to treat each customer as friendly and helpful as possible. We want to make sure that if anyone remembers anything about coming into David's Music House, it is that they were treated with kindness and made to feel welcome. This along with your expertise and quality service will insure that the word will spread and bring new customers consistently.

A New Year and Perfect Time for Reflection

Let's face it, the first day of a new year is really just another next day, but having a calendar that marks it as the first day of the new year makes it a grand event. As such a grand event, it gives us a great opportunity to make it a day to start something BIG. We all usually make promises to ourselves to do things that we always want to do, but we decide that this is a perfect day to finally do it, such as lose weight or be better organized, etc.

Perhaps starting a new business, as I did in the final quarter of 2010, is making me do a lot of reflection, on what was going right and what needs fixing, but this is making me look at the new year by first, reflecting on what happened in 2010 first. Reflection will directly feed into what the focus for the new year should be. Reflection will provide the goals and resolutions for the coming year.

Starting a new business, especially for the first time, will have you going through a learning period from time you start planning, through when you open your doors and then for a period of at least 3 months. The dust has seemed to settle and the first 3 months are basically tweaking and getting things running. Suddenly, as the dust clears, you find that you begin to see some clear directions that need the most focus. In my case, it has been an awakening of needing to narrow my focus and key in on the original key areas that were in my beginning business plan.

I found myself trying to plug every hole and remedy every situation all at the same time. Since a human being is clearly only one physical body and not capable of being everywhere all the time, I realize that I must define my most important objectives and focus my energy and time into these areas. Doing this will not only insure a better chance of success but it will also take care of other areas, purely through osmosis.

Take some time this first week of the New Year to think about the last one and the lessons that were learned. You will find that it will lay out your goals to begin in the new year. Also, don't worry about setting goals that are forever or for the entire year. Concentrate on some immediate goals, and work on them until you achieve them.

The New Year will always be another year of challenges that will require you to constantly change your goals. The first day of a new year is a great time to refresh but we can and must make new resolutions all the time as we face what life presents to us, and you can be sure that that will always happen.

Thanks to all of the readers and supporters of this website/blog and I wish a prosperous and happy 2011.

David

Perspective: Understood in a Pale Blue Dot

I just happened upon this video narrated by Carl Sagan. I always loved to watch anything Carl Sagan every spoke about, as no one ever quite put science and humankind's relationship to the Universe in better words. 

This video puts life as we know it very much in perspective. We all tend to think of the world and life as they evolve, surround and effect us, in our small moments in time.

In his perfect words, Carl Sagan puts everything we humans have ever known all in "perfect perspective".

Every day is one more and one less step on life's journey!

When we are young, we can't wait to get older, to drive a car, strike out on our own, do it our way! When we arrive there, we usually find it much more difficult than we thought, but we're hell bent on having a good time, no matter what.

Suddenly, we find that it's no longer "all about ourselves" as we marry and begin a family, but that's OK, because we're going to be the very best spouse, parent and provider. We find ourselves struggling along the way, realizing that the rest of the world isn't going to make this easy, but we keep on plugging away, as long as we can come back home with those we love.

Then we start to get a bit more serious about thinking what we have done so far. We struggle with providing for everyone, but wondering if we are allowed to think about ourselves again. What if I hadn't....wonder if I had only....what would my life be like now?

Somewhere between our 4th and 5th decade, we begin to think of some things we better serioulsy start doing. What will it be like when I retire?....Will I be able to retire?....So we get serious about organizing finances and goals.

Beyond our 5th decade, we hit a realization about where we are and what we need to do. We may find a new confidence about ourselves and wonder why we never had it before. We begin to look inside ourselves and realize that it is indeed time to look for inner value that leads to happiness. We begin to discover that we never wasted time because everything we did made us who we are and gave some sense of what we still need to do.

One thing we realize for certain as we age is that every minute of every day is one more and one less step on life's journey and somewhere along the road, we need to always Stop and Smell the Roses, as Ferdinand. The story of Ferdinand, the bull who followed his heart and proved that just because you're a bull you don't have to act like one, served as a major influence and spirit in the 2009 movie The Blind Side, the story of Michael Oher, with a similar metaphorical message.

The link below is to a video of my mother's life from her early years until Alzheimer's ended her journey on Earth on Jan. 25, 2010. Watching the video gives a real sense of how fast it really goes....91 years in 10 minutes....Make the best of it! 


(You may need to click on "Small" below the video to see the picture in proper size)

http://gallery.me.com/dlindberg49#100020